Sunday, May 02, 2004

While heritage experts are clamouring that the government retain theworld title of World Heritage List for Kathmandu Valley, thegovernment itself is working secretly to narrow down monument zonesin the name of saving the title.

Government officials have come up with a strange proposalto "safeguard" the Kathmandu Valley UNESCO List of World Heritage inDanger - self-delist problem-prone areas and only keep the monumentssafe.

The Department of Archaeology (DoA) held a seminar last week attendedby selected participants, which busied itself with narrowing down themonument zones. It proposed to delist all traditional settings of theresidential Newari houses around the historic palaces of Kathmandu,Patan and Bhaktapur. The proposal also confined it to the temples ofPashupatinath and Changu Narayan. It proposed naming only the stupasof Swayambhu and Boudha as monument zones, and not theirsurroundings. In any case, these surroundings have been eitherdeliberately destroyed or are crowded with hundreds of concreteTibetan monasteries and walls. The seminar itself evoked differencesof opinion, participants revealed.

DoA officials refused to comment on the proposal but said that it wasa part of the seminar. It is expected that the officials willformally present the proposal of the narrowed down zones to UNESCOdelegates at the international seminar taking place next week.

The World Heritage Committee, the UNESCO body which lists all theWorld Heritage Sites of the world, has nudged the governmentrepeatedly over the deterioration of monument zones. Theinternational missions found little or no improvement during theirvisits. Ultimately, on June 30, 2003, the Valley was put ultimatelyin the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. The UNESCO documentstated, "The Kathmandu valley zones witnessed uncontrolled urbandevelopment around thereby affecting the traditional heritage, thelandscape and the architectural fabric of the properties."

Keshav Raj Jha, former ambassador to France and representative toUNESCO, told this daily, "The proposal surprised me. I must say it isfoolish and ridiculous." Jha added it was a case of killing one sonamong seven just because he was not doing well, for the sake ofsocial status. "International convention does not allow it. If ithappens, the World Heritage sites will get confined to a bedroom or asmall temple," he said.

Prof Jiv Raj Pokhrel, heritage expert and president of the NepalEngineers' Association, said the government ought to extend the sitesin order to prove to the world that Nepal possesses unparalleledcultural heritage. "Instead, efforts are being made to minimise it.We should at least keep the inscribed sites, if we cannot expandtheir scope," he said.

Om Chanran Amatya, chairman of Bhaktapur Heritage Groups, saidconcrete houses around monument zones had mushroomed around thezones, probably as a result of bribe-taking by government officialsor municipal bodies.

"It is a dishonour to our heritage," Amatya added.

---http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullstory.asp?filename=aFanata0sa2qzqma2Ua7qa.axamal&folder=aHaoamW&Name=Home&dtSiteDate=20040502&sImageFileName=---Not convincing The government's new proposal to narrow down monumentzones in the Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site � a conglomerationof seven UNESCO-identified monument zones � has been perceived as anidea leading to gradual phasing out of the monuments of lesseropulence but which in fact are recognised by the Western world as theunique fabric of Nepali culture. It is understandable that the lateststep based on the "zoom-out approach" to concentrate conservationefforts on any specific monument of international repute within azone might as well have been prompted by fund constraints, amongothers. But that such a drastic and narrow approach should be adoptedto preserve the Sites � each one often described by experts as anopen museum � especially in the aftermath of the Kathmandu ValleyWorld Heritage Site being inscribed in the List of World Heritage inDanger last July, bodes ill for the country's conservation endeavours.

Any heritage site, not to mention Kathmandu Valley, comprises a rangeof other components such as its people and their culture, art,architecture and life style. Take away any one of these and themosaic becomes that much more incomplete. Similarly, to ignore theminor edifices, as the plan appears to have envisaged, which haveserved as eloquent expressions of Nepali heritage, is but to renderthe landscape of Nepali heritage picture a bit more fuzzy. It is truethat redefining the borders of these monument zones would no doubtmake the task of preserving them better. But the Kathmandu ValleyPreservation Trust and other agencies concerned should not be tooinflexible in their approach while delimiting the borders. This willoffer an excuse to undesirable elements in and around the Sites topoach on the tangible as well as intangible cultural values embodiedin them.

If, for example, the proposal to delist traditional settings of theresidential Newari houses around the historic palaces of Kathmandu,Patan and Bhaktapur is true, it is hard to conceive how this willcontribute to the conservation of the core heritage monuments. Tosome extent, the peripheral structures have been acting as bufferzones, as a protective shield until now. With the collateral edificesabout to be delisted, it is hard to visualise how a sustainableaction plan involving different stakeholders can be worked out.Careful guidelines will have to be chalked out for the localmanagement committees engaged in conservation. Unless the governmentpresents a convincing case to the World Heritage Centre in Parissaying how the latest proposal will help preserve the monuments, itis unlikely that Nepal will succeed in wooing the Centre to delistthe Valley from the danger list.